CWC 2019: Predicting the teams' positions on the points table

#2 Australia

Pakistan v Australia - ODI Series: Game 5

Australia was written off by a lot of people before the start of 2019 because of their poor run of form in the ODIs. They hardly won any games in 2018 and it looked like it would continue. However, they proved their doubters wrong with a brilliant outing in their next 13 games. They won 9 of those games and defeated India and Pakistan away from home, and showed that they are serious title contenders.

They achieved those victories without the likes of Steve Smith, David Warner and Mitchell Starc which makes it even more impressive. Their squad has all bases covered and there is no apparent weakness. Their fast bowling pack is superb with as many as five top quality bowlers in Starc, Pat Cummins, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Jason Behrendorff, and Jhye Richardson.

All of them can bowl at express speeds and they can also extract bounce on any kind of surface. They can also swing the ball and bowl at the death. Adam Zampa and Nathan Lyon will be the two spinners for them.

Their batting line-up is power packed with the likes of Aaron Finch, Glenn Maxwell, Usman Khawaja and Marcus Stoinis. However, their biggest strength will undoubtedly be the batting prowess of Warner and Smith, who have been scoring runs for fun in the IPL.